THE DIGITAL AESTHETE : Lecture and workshop

2014, Chelsea College of Art

A rough portrait of the contemporary user.

The contemporary user of digital networks

The Digital Aesthete and the extent of her senses

This will take me through a brief history of 'Digital thought' from the 1600's 'The New Science', the cataloging and dividing up of the world into a perfect ontology; the extension of maths into the newly formed social sciences and the development of cybernetics as practical and culturally provoked. This lecture will be an anarchological excavation of the histories of new-media as well as a look at the deep-time emergance of, what I consider, the roots of 'Digital thought' from Vico Giambattista, Thomas Hobbes, Seigfried Zielinski, Friedrich Kittler, McLuhan etc.

I'll be looking at the new virtual communities and the mediatisation of natural human interactions, rituals, mythologies and languages. The contemporary languages behind our digital networks and the media we employ and how they have changed radically within the last 10 years to incorporate a deep metaphoric and plural meaning. This meaning has market-value and has become quickly exchangeable, able to flow between different definitions to suit the needs of the community; as contemporary consumer/user we are expected to be pluralistically and culturally discerning within the extra senses provided to us as a Digital Aesthete.